Use Simple Registry Tricks To Solve SD Memory Card Disappearance Issue In Windows Mobile PCC Device
Windows Mobile Smartphone or PPC (Pocket PC) phone is an interesting fully-functional device that offers every advantage of a standalone PPC along with telephony components for data and voice communication via Wireless WAN (Wide Area Network).
These mobile smartphone devices by Windows accept an external Secure Digital (SD) memory card in order to increase the storage memory space allowing the user to store ample of data and applications, especially programs like GPS navigation device which normally consume huge memory space.
However it has been noticed that, sometimes when the smartphone device resumes from sleep or suspend state, the Secure Digital memory card that was inserted into its card slot gets disappeared or does not get detected instantly, even though the SD card was working fine just some moments ago.
Occasionally, the SD card does appear in the folder tree of File Explorer but indicates that there is no free memory space, or sometimes data on the card seems to be corrupt thereby causing the entire device to hang and stop responding to programs (like camera) which attempt to access, read or write from the SD card. As another symptom, no files/ data is seen within the directories.
A simple way to resolve or fix the problem is to eject and re-insert the SD card into the slot again. Once reinserted, Windows smartphone device will detect the SD card and make it visible again. But doing this each time the SD card disappears is quite troublesome and annoying.
Also, the smartphone device might assume that the user has inserted a new memory card, besides the original one, thereby creating a folder by the name “Storage Card2? so as to represent the new card (which is actually the same original “SDMMC” card) causing all shortcuts and links to break.
This issue possibly arises as the chipset configuration for SD card is not compatible with either ROM (Read Only Memory) or card reader of the device.
It is reported that Japan-made SD memory cards (like MiniSD and MicroSD) which utilize Toshiba chipset (some Kingston brand models) are more compatible with a majority of Windows Mobile devices as compared to Taiwan made SD cards (some Crucial brand models)
However to sort out the issue, you may upgrade the firmware ROM or OS, replace the handset or change to a superior quality SD card. If none of these options are feasible, you can use the below mentioned registry trick as a workaround.
1. Run Registry Editor (For e.g. CeRegEditor or Registry Editor).
2. Navigate to the below mentioned registry keys and alter the value data of the registry entries consequently.
[HKLM\System\StorageManager]“PNPUnloadDelay“=dword:8196
[HKLM\System\StorageManager]“PNPWaitIODelay“=dword:8196
You need to enter “8196” as a DECIMAL. The HEX (HEXADECIMAL) equivalent for it is 0×00002004.
As stated by Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN), “PNPUnloadDelay” specifies the time delay (usually in milliseconds) amidst unmounting and detaching an unavailable device. PNPUnloadDelay forms the base for PNPWaitIODelay.
PNPWaitIODelay specifies the waiting time before trying an input/output operation on the unavailable device (like SD card) and by default has a value which is three times the PNPUnloadDelay value.
By default, both the registry keys possess lower values, 1500 or 4096 which corresponds to shorter waiting time. This possibly causes the device to assume that the card is removed when it resumes from suspend/ sleep state.
However, if the above mentioned registry trick does not solve the SD card disappearance error issue, you can also try to disable “sleep mode” setting on the card. In order to do so, you need to change the registry key mentioned below for turn off or disabling the Power Management feature for the SD card.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Drivers\SDCARD\ClientDrivers\Class\SDMemory_Class]
“DisablePowerManagement“=dword:00000001
After you change the registry keys, just soft reset the device to ensure that the Secure Digital (SD) card disappearance issue has been resolved.